Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel

For more than a year, Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan dedicated themselves to producing what they consider a cinematic act of faith: a film co-directed by an Israeli and a Palestinian. In the summer of 2002, they traveled together from the south to the north of their native country, traced their journey on a map, and called it Route 181. This virtual line follows the borders outlined in Resolution 181, which was adopted by the United Nations on November 29, 1947 to partition Palestine into two states.

As they travel along this route, they meet Palestinians and Israelis, young and old, men and women, civilians and soldiers, and film them in their everyday lives. These individuals all have their own way of evoking the frontiers that separate them from their neighbors: concrete, barbed wire, cynicism, humor, indifference, suspicion, aggression.

Frontiers have been built on the hills and in the plains, on mountains and in valleys, but above all inside the minds and souls of these two peoples and in the collective unconscious of both societies. This film takes the viewer on a disorientating journey across this tiny territory with vast ramifications.